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'''Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp''' ([[Saint Petersburg|St Petersburg]], [[April 29]], [[1895]] – [[Saint Petersburg|Leningrad]] [[August 22]], [[1970]]) was a [[Russia]]n [[structuralist]] scholar who analysed the basic plot components of Russian [[folk tale]]s to [[identify ]] their simplest irreducible [[narrative ]] elements. His ''[[Morphology of the Folk Tale]]'' was published in Russian in 1928; although it represented a breakthrough in both [[folkloristics]] and [[morphology (folkloristics)|morphology]] and influenced [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]] and [[Roland Barthes]], it was generally unnoticed in the West until it was translated in the 1950s.

Propp extended the Russian [[Formalist]] approach to [[narratology|the study of narrative structure]]. In the Formalist approach, [[sentence ]] [[structures ]] in narrative had been broken down into analysable elements, or "morphemes". Propp used this method by analogy to [[analyse ]] folk tales. Ignoring narrative tone or mood, or extraneous decorative detail, and breaking down a large [[number ]] of Russian folk tales into their smallest narrative units, which he called functions, and some of his modern followers like to call "narratemes", Propp was able to arrive at a typology of narrative structures. By analysing types of characters and kinds of [[action ]] in a hundred tales, Propp was able to arrive at the conclusion that there were just thirty-one generic "narratemes" in the traditional Russian folk tale. While not all are [[present ]] in every tale, he found that all the tales he analysed displayed the functions in unvarying sequence. He claimed that “[F]ive [[categories ]] of elements define not only the [[construction ]] of a tale, but the tale as a [[whole]].”:

# Conjuctive elements ([[Deus ex machina|ex machina]], announcement of misfortune, [[chance ]] disclosure – [[mother ]] calls hero loudly, etc.)

# Forms of [[appearance ]] of dramatis personae (the flying arrival of [[dragon]], chance meeting with donor)

“Morphologically, a tale (сказка) may be termed any [[development ]] proceeding from villainy (A) or a [[lack ]] (a), through intermediary functions to [[marriage]], or to [[other ]] functions employed as a [[dénouement]]. Terminal functions are at [[times ]] a reward, a gain or in general the liquidation of misfortune, en escape from pursuit, etc. This type of development is termed by us a move (ход). Each new act of villainy, each new lack creates a new move. A tale can have several moves, and when analyzing a tale one must first determine the number of moves of which it consists. One move may directly follow [[another ]] but they can also interweave.”

The summation of a typical Proppian [[analysis ]] consists of an alphanumeric string representing the functions in the tale, for example:

As well as finding the 31 narrative functions of Propp's [[theory ]] he also discovered that there are ''only'' 8 broad [[Fictional character|character]] types in the 100 tales he analysed:

# The [[Fairy godmother|donor]] (prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical [[object]])

# The princess (person the hero [[marries]], often sought for during the narrative)# Her [[father ]] # The dispatcher ([[character ]] who makes the lack known and sends the hero off)# The hero or [[victim]]/ seeker hero, reacts to the donor, weds the princess

Propp's approach has been criticized for entirely removing all [[verbal ]] considerations from the analysis, despite the folktale's usual [[form ]] [[being ]] [[oral]], and also all considerations of tone, mood, character, and, indeed, anything that differentiates one fairy tale from another. Among the more prominent critics of Propp is the famous [[French ]] Structuralist Claude Levi-[[Strauss]], who used Propp's monograph on the morphology of the Folktale to demonstrate the shortcomings of the Formalist approach, and the superiority of the Structuralist approach. (see [[Levi-Strauss]], Claude. "[[Structure ]] and Form: [[Reflection ]] on a [[Work ]] by Vladimir Propp")

* [http://www.uni-essen.de/literaturwissenschaft-aktiv/Vorlesungen/epik/propp.htm Assessment of Propp] (in [[German]])